The Novikov Experiment

By Bryan Caplan

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About a year ago, educator and start-up engineer Lev Novikov bought a dozen copies of The Case Against Education and let them circulate around his school. Last week, he let me know what happened. Reprinted with Lev’s permission.

Just wanted to give you an update on what happened with a dozen copies of Case Against Education in one high school. I ended up buying every format of the book and had my staff read it and listen to it as well.

The short version is that there was a lot of interest in reading the book, but very little interest in discussing it. Several teachers “caught” students reading the books and asked to borrow them. I personally know 3 teachers who have borrowed the books, but only one actually came back to chat about it. Interestingly, the books have found their ways into the hands of principals and other faculty and I’m just going to let them roam about.

The students were extremely reluctant to discuss the book, especially in a group. I ended up having about a dozen 1-on-1 conversations with students most of which followed one of these (predictable) arcs:

“I always knew school was wasting my time! Is this why you’re trying to teach us to program and build stuff?”

“I can’t argue with his points, but I think he’s wrong.”

A few kids seemed genuinely despondent. They preferred complaining about how school is a waste much more than getting the full Bryan Caplan treatment about why it actually is. Nonetheless, even those students considered the last parts of the book a useful recapitulations of your point. For some, that was the first time they really understood your main thesis.

READER COMMENTS

john hare

Jan 2 2019 at 5:38pm

A general unwillingness to discuss the book suggests to me that its’ impact will be far more limited than you would like. I’m reading it as a failure to engage this segment of the target audience. A person convinced will discuss.

Yaakov

Jan 3 2019 at 12:34pm

What do you want students to do after reading your book? Drop out of high school? forgo college? If they are intelligent enough to read your book and understand it, that might not be the right response. If they are not intelligent enough to read your book and understand it then there is nothing to expect.

What we really want is to change the public mood. But that will take years and much more effort than one book.

Richard

Jan 4 2019 at 1:06am

Is it possible that they didn’t read it, which explains why they never talk about it? And when you ask them about it, they just guess what it’s about and give you their reactions? The comments they give provide no evidence that they read past the title.

Richard

Jan 4 2019 at 1:09am

I mean to say some of the comments, it seems clear some students probably read it.

Jim Dunning

Jan 4 2019 at 11:45pm

I, like Lev Novikov, work at a high school and have shared copies of Bryan’s book (or its thesis when conversation offers opportunities) with colleagues and students. My experiences echo Lev’s and might provide greater context.

“I personally know 3 teachers who have borrowed the books, but only one actually came back to chat about it.”

john hare suggests, “I’m reading it as a failure to engage this segment of the target audience. A person convinced will discuss.” john is right but not through any fault of the book’s, at least not in the way we might think: it’s actually not the book that’s failing to engage, but the audience that is failing to engage. K-12 education is like a religion; its acolytes—most of them, anyway—have known nothing but its ivory towered halls and classrooms and to tell them there’s no after-life isn’t just heresy, but a calumny of their world order. It’s an article of faith that public education provides a paramount, axiomatic good.

Teacher friends have candidly confessed to me that they can’t/won’t argue the data and the conclusions because to even think about (i.e., “engage”) distresses them immensely since it questions their life’s work; not only are they incurious and unconversant of the downstream consequences of what they do, they actively avoid considering them. One has said she “doesn’t want to think about it” if the data are valid and another has told me that bringing up the questions emotionally “hurts” her.

To paraphrase john, it’s their fear that a person who discusses may become convinced.

“I always knew school was wasting my time! Is this why you’re trying to teach us to program and build stuff?”

My discussions with students differ from Lev’s — of the couple-dozen or so I’ve engaged individually and in groups, most essentially go duh-of-course the classes are worthless and then assume there’s not much relevance to post-high-school life except as a means to their ineluctable college-then-career destiny. The students in high school don’t, however, extrapolate the responsible conditions of high school into higher education, but those in college hold similar opinions about the value of their campus experience.

The differences from Lev’s student discussions probably result from my role as a debate coach, and most of my mine are with students whose world knowledge is self-generated, so they often find their classroom experiences dull and tedious. They perceive their academic success is their responsibility independent of the efforts of the teacher.

With regard to the teachers and administrators in elementary, middle, and high schools, their inability to engage results from fundamental characteristics of school employment Bryan has referenced. He points out that teachers are people who enjoy classrooms, both K-12 and college ones, and regularly assume others—of course!—should enjoy them as well; they also rarely have significant employment experience outside of teaching. When I presented research that questions the morality and utility of our school’s highly energetic and mono-focused efforts to send 95 percent of our grads to colleges, one friend didn’t question the data and analyses, but declared she didn’t want “to deny her students the wonderful college experiences” she had.

I fear that there are intrinsic elements of K-12 education employment culture that limit most teachers’ ability and, most importantly, willingness to engage in the debate Bryan presents. Education, career selection, and limited experience in and knowledge of the vocations they are preparing their students for creates a population that places outsized importance on the model they unquestioningly embrace and espouse. To question it is blasphemy and painful.

That’s what’s behind the “fun experiences” Lev and I keep running up against when we attempt to engage.

Jim Dunning

Jan 5 2019 at 1:17am

By the way, this is not to impugn the character or motivations or dedication of the teachers I know and have discussed this with. The lack of engagement is primarily a predictable function of how the education model attracts and retains (and releases) employees. It is the process that is ineffective. Many of the teachers I know are passionate and work very hard; regrettably, the model mitigates against consideration of other options, eternal reflection, and evolution.

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